


Breakable

by Nigmuff



Series: 2018 Stony Bingo Fills [1]
Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-29 18:35:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15735084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nigmuff/pseuds/Nigmuff
Summary: Steve watches as Tony's arc reactor is ripped out of his chest, and he wonders where the wires end and the arteries begin. Set during The Avengers Protocol Pt.1.





	Breakable

**Author's Note:**

> My first work for the Steve/Tony pair! Wow, this ship really hit me hard. I love these two and their relationship so much. Con crit is always welcome, as long as it's respectful.
> 
> For the “Watching Helplessly” square on my stony bingo card.

Steve couldn’t help but think about the times he used to hang out with Tony in his lab, back in the good old days. He would go to find some peace and quiet, because living anywhere Hulk and Thor frequented was always going to be stressful. Steve would read or sketch, and the two of them would start off chatting about everything and anything, possible strategies and training simulations for the team, or what groceries needed to be bought. Then the talk would peter out as Tony became more and more engrossed in his own work. Steve would pretend to draw (he did draw sometimes, honest) and watch Tony at work.

On one occasion, Tony had been fixing his Iron Man boot. There were pieces of glass in it that had melted into the crevices. Tony had sat hunched over his work table. He had had an eye glass magnifier strapped around his head. He zoomed it in and out until he got the right point, and then he took some small tweezers and was painstakingly pulling out all the glass, piece by piece. He spent about a half hour on them. Steve remembered being surprised by his focus and determination; Stark had always seemed to him like someone who had a low attention span who couldn’t be bothered by such mundane actions. This was the first time Steve had got a look at this other side to Tony.

All the tools had been delicate and small; tweezers were followed by a brush, and then Tony examined it some more, twisting it this way and that. When he tried them out, the boots had worked, and Steve had been the recipient of Tony’s triumphant grin. Steve’s stomach had swooped, and he had had to swallow before he trusted himself to speak.

***

“Iron Man!” Steve shouted, and the world seemed to close in on him, until he was unaware of anything else but Tony Stark.

They had… had just _met up again_ , were about to get a second chance, and then…

When MODOK had opened his eyes and made that barrier between them, Steve's heart had sunk, and nothing but his strict training had kept him from fully panicking.

Tony was screaming, face twisting in pain — which Steve could see because the face plate had been _yanked off_ , MODOK could _control him_ , Tony was in _danger._ Steve slammed his trusty, indestructible shield into the barrier over and over again, but nothing worked, and it wasn’t like he could really focus. All his tactical thinking went down the drain as he stared at Tony’s screwed up face, and he couldn’t hear anything but his screams. The armor was being ripped off of him, and Steve felt powerless. He watched as Tony, the bravest man he knew, had every ounce of his defenses striped away from him, until he was left in his tight (weak) (not made for good defense) ( _not enough to save Tony_ ) under-armor suit. And then—

The arc reactor was twisted in Tony’s chest.

Steve watched, as if in slow motion, as the reactor was twisted, pulled, yanked out of Tony’s chest, and Steve thought about delicate wires, phones that broke because they fell a few feet onto the floor, CDs that cracked if you held them too hard.

***

_Tony grimaced as he assessed the damage.  
_

_“Is there any hope for it?” Steve asked nervously. He kept switching his weight from one leg to the other, trying not to crowd Tony. The phone wasn’t anything special, except that it had a simple interface that Steve found easy to use. He didn’t want to go back to a device that made him feel stupid.  
_

_Tony put the pieces that had once been Steve’s phone on the table and sighed. “There’s only so much I can do,” he said, not unkindly. “I think this is a lost cause.”_

***

The machinery was pulled out of Tony, leaving behind a gaping hole in his chest. Steve was trying desperately not to flashback to the war, and the holes that were left in people’s bodies, and the survival rate of those people. Steve could taste bile at the back of his throat, a bitter taste, and shoved it down roughly. Now was not the time to throw up.

The moment the Hulk broke the barrier, Steve couldn’t get to Tony fast enough. The bad guys were leaving, but Steve couldn’t even bring himself to look at them, and never mind that Red Skull was his arch-nemesis that he’d been fighting for years. The team would take care of them. Tony was lying limp and unmoving on the ground. Steve was trying to remember how long a person could last without a working heart. (About four minutes? Oh God, oh God—) He knelt and rolled the man gently onto his back. The hole was even more grotesque and unnatural up close, but Steve didn’t care beyond what that meant for Tony’s chance at survival. Steve brushed the hair out of Tony’s pale face, even though he knew it was pointless. He couldn’t quite get himself to think clearly. He was just about to start barking out orders, even though he had no idea what he was going to say, when Tony stirred in his arms.

"Cap?” Tony said, his voice weak. “Remember how far I went to pull your butt out of the fire?”

 ** _You’re_** _a butt_ , Steve thought hysterically.

“Your turn.” Tony smiled.

Then he fainted dead away.

Leave it to Tony to be flippant on his potential death bed. Steve ripped that thought away. It was because it _wasn’t_ his death bed, dammit. He trusted Steve to save him, and that was just what he was going to do.

“Avengers!” Steve ordered. “Let’s go."


End file.
